This invention relates to several different fields of application, including, but not limited to, crafts, fingernail art, pharmaceutical, and industrial-home workshops. In each situation, an object needs to be picked up, which is difficult both because the object is small and challenging to grasp or place, or because of user limitations, for example, those caused by arthritis or limited vision.
In crafts such as scrap booking, card making, sewing, bead works, clay working, apparel or shoe adornment and egg decoration, tiny embellishments, including but not limited to gems, sequins, punched shapes and buttons, are placed onto an adhesive, then strung, pressed into clay, or objects such as sewing pins that have scattered need to be picked up. Tweezers or fingers are the most common implements used to pick up and place these tiny objects, however, serious limitations are encountered in the form of imprecise placement using fingers and objects getting bent, crumpled or shooting out of the grips of tweezers.
Nail artists place ultra small jewels and decorations onto wet nail polish. Tweezers, or a brush dipped in wet polish, are the most common implements used to pick up and place these small jewels. Difficulty with current methods includes the jewels shooting out from the grip of the tweezers and transferring from the equally tacky polish on the brush to the fingernail polish.
In the pharmaceutical/dental/medical arena, small pills or appliances can be challenging to pick up due to the object's size or because of user limitations such as dexterity or eyesight.
In workshop applications, washers, screws and the like can be difficult to grasp and place into a proper location. Those skilled in the field know that while many tools are available with magnetic tips, non-steel items will not stick to a magnet, and many tools do not have a magnetic tip.
One embodiment of the prior art device taught in Dalbo U.S. Pat. No. 5,251,943 calls for a kit that would include a bottle of “pressure-sensitive adhesive”, which would be applied to an elongated member. This invention is directed only towards the picking up of tiny craft beads. In beading, release is irrelevant as a needle completes the transfer. Disadvantages of this invention to other uses include an 1) inherent delay time required for drying the liquid adhesive, 2) limitations of size, weight and shape of objects as pressure sensitive adhesive can not hold chunky, irregular objects, 3) unattractive and contaminated layers of adhesive on the elongated member from repeated applications, and 4) difficult transfer of an embellishment onto another adhesive or onto wet nail polish from the high-tack pressure sensitive adhesive on the elongated member.
There is clearly a need which would allow the nail artist to seamlessly pick up and precisely place embellishments onto a project, arthritic fingers to easily pick up pills and small items, screws to be held fast to a screw driver, and other uses involving picking up and placing small objects. This need is met by the present invention, which is summarized and described below.